In a certain code language, ‘A + B’ means ‘A is the mother of B’; ‘A − B’ means ‘A is the brother of B’; ‘A × B’ means ‘A is the wife of B’ and ‘A ÷ B’ means ‘A is the father of B’. Based on the above, how is A related to D if ‘A × B ÷ C × D’?
- (a)Father’s sister
- (b)Father’s brother
- (c)Wife's mother
- (d)Father-in-law
Answer
Why
Correct — C. Read the chain A × B ÷ C × D one link at a time, left letter first.
Rule: 'A × B' means A is the wife of B, and 'A ÷ B' means A is the father of B.
A × B: A is B's wife
B ÷ C: B is C's father
C × D: C is D's wife
A is married to C's father, so C is A's daughter. C is D's wife, so A is the mother of D's wife — that is wife's mother -> option (c).
Why the others are wrong
- (a)Father’s sister — 'Father's sister' makes A an aunt of D. Nothing in the chain links A to D's father — the only relation touching D is C × D, which makes D the husband of A's daughter.
- (b)Father’s brother — A appears as the left letter of '×', so A is a wife and therefore female. 'Father's brother' names a male relative and is out before the chain is even traced.
- (d)Father-in-law — The direction is right but the gender is wrong. A is the mother-in-law of D, not the father-in-law, because 'A × B' has already fixed A as female.
Concept
A coded-relation question hands you a private dictionary that lives only inside that question. Each symbol is defined as 'A is the ___ of B', so the left letter is always the subject.
Read the chain one link at a time and draw it: A married to B, B the father of C, C married to D. Two generations, four people.
Two of the symbols also carry gender. × makes its left letter female and ÷ makes its left letter male, which strikes out options before the chain is finished.
The chain never states that A is C's mother — it states that A married C's father. SSC treats that as motherhood in these coded items, which is why the key reads 'wife's mother'.
Key facts
- 'A × B' means A is the wife of B, which fixes A as female.
- 'A ÷ B' means A is the father of B, which fixes A as male and B as A's child.
- The chain is read left to right, each symbol linking only the two letters it stands between.
- A is female and D is male here, so a male in-law relation cannot describe A.
Study next
Common traps
- Reading 'A × B' as B is the wife of A, which reverses the whole chain.
- Missing that x fixes A as female, which alone removes two options.
- Answering how D is related to A instead of how A is related to D.
This question defines its four symbols in its own stem, so nothing carries over from a paper you solved yesterday — read the legend every time.
A different symbol-substitution item sits at Reasoning Q.7 in this shift (19 Sep 2024, 09:00), where the symbols swapped are arithmetic operators rather than relations.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.